The Last Handful of Clover - Book 1: The Hereafter

1.43 Crossing South Temple

June 6, 3:30 pm

Jesus Christ, his name is Kimball!

Richard stood on the hillside, trembling and watching the boy and his girlfriend rapidly jogging across the green lawn, their shoes still in their hands. The emotions that roared through him were hard to name and categorize. But more than anything else, he simply felt disgusted. As his youth had faded, Richard knew well that he had sought to reclaim it in the eyes and the arms of ever younger men. But now, as a ghost, Richard feared he had reached the ultimate, pathetic pinnacle of that slow march.

For the last few hours, he had allowed himself to forget that he was dead, desperately seeking comfort in the meager whiff of intimacy that being a ghost provided to him. He had put his head on the boy's shoulder. He had read his journal as he scrawled in it with his four-color pen. And he had allowed his loneliness to find just the tiniest comfort in the cold, hard figure of this beautiful young boy, who reminded him so much of who he used to be.

Putting his face in his hands, Richard was overwhelmed by an anxious rush that was equal parts longing and regret. Grasping at fractured young men was sad enough when he was alive. In death, it was nothing short of tragic.

He was dead and cold. His body was rotting in a casket somewhere, or perhaps had already cremated. And his fucking heart still wanted to fall in love with some random, fragile and needy young man.

My whole life has been one long flight from death, he thought.

Was it possible that every young man that had ever shared his life, and shared his bed, had somehow been an extended middle finger to growing old? Perhaps feeling their firm bodies, seeing the desire in their eyes, and feeling himself slide into them, or them into him, was nothing more than a blind refusal to accept that his body had an expiration date. There had been dozens of young men that had shared his bed over the years, from one-night stands to brief, but passionate affairs, to (at last) a marriage that had lasted more than a decade. Had it all really been only a sad denial of his own impending doom?

If it were true, it would be a bitter pill. And sadly futile.

Keith had once told him that, "love is when you care for the welfare of the other person more than you do for your own." Richard wanted to believe that was true, and that he was capable of such a love. But he'd betrayed Justin when he was put to that test. He'd abandoned him at the very moment that Justin needed him the most. He'd turned his back. And it had killed the boy.

I stole Justin's innocence and his youth, Richard thought, his anxiety rising to a fever pitch. Not only that, I stole his very life. What kind of vampire does something like that?

He loved Keith, but had he been any more true to him than he had been to Justin? He'd now abandoned Keith even more completely. Richard's murder was not his choice, but somehow, that didn't seem to matter in the least.

I promised Keith that I would always be there for him. That I would love him forever. And I failed.

He saw again the way Keith had looked just hours ago, collapsed in that pool of gore—his heart so utterly shattered that Richard feared it could never be mended. His kind, soft, beautiful face twisted with such agony that it put a knife in Richard's heart.

"Keith!" Richard screamed in a voice so loud and with such longing that he scarcely recognized it as his own.

There was no answer in the park. The grass and sunlight swallowed his voice without a trace. He looked around, and the hillside was empty. Richard had never felt so forlorn, so alone, and he struggled to regain his breath. When he did, his voice was soft. And he spoke with a certainty that suddenly made everything clear.